The Best Lasagna You'll Ever Make (Restaurant-Quality) | Epicurious 101

I'm Frank Proto professional chef and culinary instructor and today I'm going to show you how to make lasagna Frank style we're talking cheesy creamy melty and delectable lasagna this is lasagna 101 making the sauce F your lasagna is definitely a process this is the flavor base of our lasagna basically the heart of the lasagna we're going to build layers we're not just going to dump everything into the pot at once we're going to Brown things off season things as we go so that we have a really nice balanced sauce at the end everyone has their own way of making lasagna mine tends to be rustic a little more homey there are lasagna that you make a bamal sauce and it's silky and creamy but at the end of the day I want this to be super accessible to you out there I have my pot on the stove I have been getting it hot I'm going to add some oil I'm going to get my pork and I'm going to season it up I'm using a pork country style rib it's got a really good fat to meet ratio I feel that pork and tomatoes really kind of blend well together and it gives your sauce this really nice mellow taste so spread them out in an even layer so it starts to get brown and at this point I say this a lot leave it alone once it starts to get brown it's going to unstick from the bottom of the pot and then we can move it around but give it time the pork in the pot's going to take 5 to 7 Minutes remember we're building layers of flavor and this is where we want to be if you look at that that is the brown that we want on most of the sides if they're not all brown like that we're okay but try and get some brown like that on at least two or three sides of your pork so while that's Browning I'm going to come over and get my sausage ready I got sausage in the casing you just get a pairing knife cut off the casing I chose spicy Italian sausage cuz I want a little heat in my sauce I love the flavor that the chili flakes give the sausage adds a little more fat adds a little more flavor we're going to get a little more deeper flavored sauce when we use two types of meat all right so the pork is now getting nice and Brown Look at that that's what I want you can see that the pork is also giving off some fat that Fat's going to help us Brown our vegetables the pork looks like it's done I'm going to take it out and put into a bowl but I'm going to use a slotted spoon cuz I want to leave the fat in the pot that fat is one of those foundational pieces of our flavor so don't get rid of the fat if you look at the bottom of the pan what do I have in there you guys should know this by now it's called font f o n d and and that is all the little brown bits and caramelized pieces of pork and the juices on the bottom of the pot do not get rid of that this is Again part of our flavor Bas and Foundation going to leave the fat in the pot and then I'm going to take my sausage and I'm going to get that into the pot I don't want large chunks in there so I'm going to break it up and start Browning this off my sausage is ready to go even if it's not fully cooked now I'm not too worried because it's going to be in the sauce for a long time and it's going to cook through then so I'm just going to turn this pot on really low right now and I'm going to get that same slotted spoon and take the sausage out and just put it right on top of my brown pork ribs try and leave some of those juices and fat in there fat equals flavor people don't be afraid of it if there's a little left in there it's okay don't worry about it put that aside it's going to go back into the pot in a minute Now's the Time where we start to get our vegetables going onions go in whenever I put onions in the pot I always add a little bit of salt part of that layering of flavor is seasoning throughout the process if we add a little salt as we go we get a nice balanced seasoning to our finished sauce I want you to take a second and listen to what's going on in my pot yes I said listen I hear Snap Crackle Pop I hear sizzling not hissing and that's what you want if you hear hissing that means we're steaming our onions and not sautéing them so if all you hear is hissing turn up your heat maybe a little more oil but we want to hear snapping and crackling and popping and sizzling Now's the Time to add some of the more aromatic vegetables we're going to add the carrots and we're going to add the celery I have about two ribs of celery and about two small carrots and this I don't worry about getting caramelized at this point I just want it to start to soften a little the celery and carrots are getting nice and soft and the garlic goes in last in this process because garlic Burns really quickly and we're going to cook the garlic till it's fragrant I don't need to Brown it I just want to smell roasty garlic the garlic is nice and toasty and the next thing we're going to add is dry white wine this is going to give our sauce a nice roundness A little bit of acidity it's also going to help pick up all of the fond from the bottom of the pot those little brown bits are going to get mixed in with the wine and make our sauce nice and caramelized while my wine is cooking down I'm going to make a bouquet Garney sounds fancy but basically it's just a bundle of herbs that we tie with some butcher twine I have basil I fold the basil into itself a little and then I twist around opposite directions so that you meet in the middle and you can tie we bundle it together so it's easy to remove it adds flavor to our sauce but then we can take it out really easily throw that in right now and just let our wine continue to cook the Wine's been happily bubbling away if I take a whiff the alcohol is cooked off and it's time to move on to the next step I'm going to add the tomatoes and I chose a ground peeled tomato this is a great place to save a little time if I got whole peeled Tomatoes I'd have to grind them up these don't have any skins in them and they're the right size for our sauce all the tomatoes go in save the cans cuz we're going to rinse them out and I used to think that this was done just to get the rest of the tomatoes but there's another reason for it when we add water to our sauce it gives our sauce a longer cooking time which gives it more time to develop flavor if we just add the tomatoes in it's going to reduce too much too quickly so what I'm going to do now is let the tomatoes come to a simmer I'm going to add a nice grinding of fresh pepper a nice pinch of salt salt a little bit of chili flake cuz we do have hot sausage in there but I do want to supplement that with a little more heat stir that in let it come to a simmer so let's give it a taste you got to be careful here because this is going to reduce but I do think it needs a little more salt just a nice pinch stir it in the sauce is bubbling away I'm going to lower my heat from high to medium and I'm going to add all the meat back with all of the juices give it a stir you can probably go a little lower on the heat to kind of medium low let it cook blow and slow for about an hour and a half until everything comes together the pork gets tender and then we can make our lasagna my sauce has been on for about an hour and a half if you look at it it's got a really nice deep red color a little Sheen of oil on top which is always nice and the pork is nice and tender so what we're going to do now is we're going to remove that bouquet Garney it's done its work it's given its flavor up for the sauce and we're also going to remove our pork so that we can kind of just chop it up and shred it so go go through the sauce when you cut into that lasagna you want to get the perfect bite every time and by shredding the pork we're allowing that to happen the pork has been cooking long enough in the sauce that we really don't need to do much to shred it it falls apart really nice and this goes right back into the sauce now I'm going to take this basil and shred it up and add it to the sauce a lot of times when you're cooking things like this for a long time they can get kind of heavy and like kind of stodgy and the basil just kind of gives it a little lift towards the end my sauce looks really good but I am going to adjust the consistency a little with some water I'm using dry pasta for this so the pasta is going to soak up a lot of sauce and I don't want it to be too wet or too dry so a little liquidy on my sauce is where I want to be we've taken all this time to build the layers in this sauce and it's totally paid off it's time to make our lasagna it's time to assemble lasagna and most of the hard work is done already we've made our sauce assembly can be a lot of fun but it's also a crucial St step in getting the right consistency you don't want to add too much sauce you don't want to add too little cheese remember we want that perfect bite all the way through the first step to layering our lasagna is you want to put a nice bit of sauce on the bottom we don't want it sticking to the bottom or drying out on the bottom so the sauce goes down lasagna already takes a lot of time and effort I like to use dry pasta because it's simple and easy there are some pasta products out there called oven ready which are no cooked pastas I'm using regular pasta I have seasoned my sauce I have adjusted the consistency the pasta is gonna soak up all that good flavor it's gon to go right into the pasta instead of just salted water when I'm layering my lasagna I like to put sauce on the pasta itself right so it's going to be sauce pasta sauce and then the cheese cuz I want the sauce to soak into the pasta Next Step we're going to add some of our grated cheese I have peino and parmesan I like the sharpness of peino I like the Nutty P of Parmesan I'm going to add some shredded mozzarella I'm using a low moisture mozzarella fresh mozzarella has a lot of liquid I don't want extra liquid in there and then some Ricotta and with the ricotta I dab it on right this will spread out and melt a little but I just like to put dabs around so we're just building those layers of flavor and when I use all these cheeses it gives me that nice balance between creamy and acidic and then another layer of Po pasta I am going to push down just a little right I want this to be a little compact I don't want it to be like light and fluffy I want it to be nice and dense so if the pasta overlaps a little that's fine and then another layer of sauce remember the pasta should be touching the sauce and then we go again with everything else and you notice that I'm getting into the corners as well make sure we're spreading this evenly and it's not just a lump of cheese in the middle that Each corner piece is going to have some cheese flavor too and for our last layer I'm just going to add the grated cheeses I don't want the ricotta on top there because ricotta tends to dry out and it's going to get crumbly I leave the ricotta insides where it's going to stay nice and moist and not on the top before I put it in the oven I'm going to put it onto a sheet tray or a cookie sheet you can see that our sauce is kind of like almost overflowing so if it overflows it goes onto the tray not into my oven last thing we need to do is cover this with foil I want to keep a lot of the moisture in there and I kind of wanted to steam just a little cuz I didn't cook the pasta so we'll put this on nice and loose we're going to throw this in the 350° oven for about 30 minutes remove the foil and then go for another 30 minutes to crisp up the edges and then we'll be ready to taste the lasagna's been in the oven for 30 minutes we're going to remove the foil to allow our lasagna to crisp up and the cheese to melt really nice you'll not notice that a lot of the juice has leaked out onto the tray that's kind of sacrificial juice it's probably going to stick to the tray but that's why it's important to have it so it doesn't leak all over your oven the foil on top has allowed my pasta to soak up that liquid and my cheese to steam a little and get melty it's going back into the oven for about 30 minutes and that's going to get nice and crispy and brown I took the foil off the lasagna put it back in the oven for another 30 minutes and now it's out look at it it's gorgeous Brown cheesy deliciousness but I don't want you to cut into it right away it's extremely important to note that you need to let this rest for a minimum of 30 minutes before you cut it otherwise it's a sloppy mess what's great about lasagna is that you can take it in this form you can refrigerate it you can cut it up and freeze it you can pretty much save it and serve it any way you want it but you have to let it rest before you cut it my lasagna has rested for 30 30 minutes we've given it time for everything to kind of meld together let's cut into this all right here we go make sure it's sliced all the way through I usually run the knife along the outside edge just to make sure that it's free get under there oh my goodness that is just a slice of Happiness we took our time to layer our sauce on top and on bottom of the pasta and if you look at it all that time has paid off we have a beautiful layered Las on you with a little bit of everything in each bite I'm going to make a mess but I'm going to get in there and just take a nice chunk it's cheesy it's meaty it's melty and creamy it has a little acidity from those Tomatoes The Pasta still has a little bite it's not soft and mushy it holds together really well and it's beautiful it takes time it takes technique but it is worth every moment you put into it put it in front of the people you love and they will love you back

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 378,878

Keywords: authentic lasagne recipe, easy lasagna recipe at home, easy lasagne recipe, epicurious, epicurious 101, how to make cheese lasagna, how to make easy lasagna with ground beef, how to make lasagna at home, how to make lasagna for beginners, how to make lasagna pasta, how to make lasagne, how to make meat lasagna, ingredients for lasagna, lasagna meat sauce recipe, lasagna temperature and time, lasagne, lasagne recipe, professional chef, restaurant quality lasagne

Id: 3zlJNWWJBlU

Length: 13min 2sec (782 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 20 2024